Could your website be delivering more? Improving user experience and encouraging conversions is a great place to start. Our all-new seminar, the elements of online success: grow your business online,
will give you practical tips on how to make some easy wins on your website. You’ll learn how to attract more people to your website through SEO,
improve their time on your site and encourage them to convert, all leading to a better return on investment.

As a local business, running a single site location, it’s so important to be recognised and marketed well in your catchment area. When it comes to local SEO there’s loads of things you can do to help your customers find you more easily on the internet. In this post, we’ve put together a basic checklist
of things you can do to increase your local search engine rankings.

Step One – Claim your Google My Business listing

Having an accurate and populated listing on Google is the most important out of all these steps. Include the same NAP (name, address and phone number)
as you have on your website and choose one category that best describes your business. Getting into the pack of three on Google Maps for your business
type is the absolute ideal.

Step Two – Set up or claim your location on secondary search sites

Covering all your bases is important. You should put your business on secondary search sites like Bing and Yelp and also consider being on Facebook and
LinkedIn. More and more people are using social media to find local business – just bear your audience in mind.

Step Three – Establish citations

Citations are a really important factor considered in ranking algorithms. Having mentions of your business’ NAP listed on well-established and well-indexed
directories, even if there’s not a direct link, will validate your business’ relevance to search engines.

Step Four – Get some reviews

Reviews can help you stand out in the search results. Having more reviews on Google My Business could be the difference between customers choosing your
website over a competitor’s.

Step Five – Add your location to your website

For a local business having your address on your website is essential. We suggest having an individual contact page with all your relevant information;
address, phone number, email and opening times. Having your address in your footer is a good idea as your location will be visible on all pages.

Step Six – Add schema markup

Adding schema markup to your site is a way to ensure that search engines know your business’ vital information; it’s like a virtual business card for search
engines.

Step Seven – Do a little link building

External linking isn’t essential but it is a big bonus for local SEO. Reaching out to organisations, communities or businesses to gain links from their
respected sites can give a real boost to your own site’s authority. Schools, government organisations and popular local sites are going to be the most
beneficial links for you.

Step Eight – Test your site’s speed

Test your website’s loading speed. A study found that 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. As such a prolific factor,
Google adjusted its algorithm accordingly.